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Patents: Mac happy

29 February 1992

By BARRY FOX

A recent British patent application (2 241 629) from Apple aims to make
its Macintosh personal computer even friendlier to use.

Many computers now display icons on the screen to represent functions
or files in the computer. A small image of a filing cabinet represents a
store of documents and an image of a sheet of paper represents an individual
file.

Apple now plans to relate the icon’s shape to its content. The computer
first creates a full size representation of the file or document, in colour,
and then scales it down to the size of an icon. So a four-page letter is
represented by four images, each looking like the original document: for
instance, a title page with a one-paragraph synopsis, two full pages of
four paragraphs each and a final page of just one paragraph.

Although no words are legible, the computer user will often be able
to recognise a document in this way. The pages are displayed one after the
other, like cartoon animation. The same system is used for icons representing
pictures or graphic documents.